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Wednesday, 12 December 2012

Japanese Politics Primer, Part 2: PM Parade

Unfortunately the last installment
ended up being much longer than I had originally envisioned, but that
was somewhat necessitated by the depth and density of the material.
Hopefully this time will be a little easier to swallow and possibly
more entertaining, since we'll be talking about the fact that the
Japanese Prime Ministership has been a complete gong show going on
seven years now.

Even if you're totally unfamiliar with
Japanese politics, you've probably caught wind of this development in
the media at least a couple of times (for some reason it was
particularly popular fodder when Kan was in power). The gist of it is
that ever since 2006 we've been presented with a new PM almost
annually, the situation becoming successively more absurd and the
reasons more sigh-inducing.

*

Koizumi Jun'ichiro (2001-2006)

I think Koizumi
might be my favourite Japanese Prime Minister ever. Not particularly
for his policies or anything, which I'm not even that familiar with,
but because he was fun to watch, even if he was kind of before my
time. He's become a bit of a minor legend, with newsanchors regaling
us with tales of his Segway expeditions, need for speed, dress-up
sessions, discovery of some psychadelic mushrooms, and, of course,
his magnificent hair. He was kind of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau of
Japan in that way. Though he attracted international criticism for
his visits to Yasukuni Shrine, he was ultimately one of the most
successful politicians in Japanese history. He enjoyed considerable
popularity and pushed through a number of reforms, but after his
postal privatization bill was defeated in 2005 he announced that he
would step down the following year in order to make way for his
successor.

Abe Shinzou (2006-2007)

Koizumi endorsed
no one, and the Jimintou leadership convention appointed Abe, who
easily led them to victory in the 2006 election. For the most part he
continued on with the policies that Koizumi had set into motion, but
also made enemies with stupid moves like stoking existing WWII
textbook controversy, denying the existence of comfort women, and
trying to mess with the Imperial orders of succession. His worst
mistake by far was to suggest that Article 9 of the Japanese
constitution needs to be changed. Because oh man, that is just asking
for heat. Article 9 is the one that prohibits Japan from having a
real army and Abe had been thinking that maybe Japan needed one of
those after all. Of course, this brooked a huge argument over whether
trying to destroy the constitution was unconstitutional, which it
was, unless you look at it retroactively. On the other hand, his
Asian foreign policy is generally praised as taking positive steps
towards understanding and reconciliation, in spite of the comments he
made in that area.

Less than a year
after his ascension, he stepped down, citing serious stomach
problems, because this is a culture where you can speak publicly
about gastrointestinal trauma without being publicly ridiculed. There
is some speculation about whether this was a legitimate medical issue
or merely an excuse allowing him to gracefully dodge responsibility,
but it's kind of a useless argument as it's all conjecture. It's
still a lame way to go out regardless, though. That said, we may not
have seen the last of Abe.

Fukuda Yasuo (2007-2008)

Fukuda
was kind of unremarkable and in fact, the only thing about him that
particularly sticks out in my mind is that he looks kind of like a
turtle. After some discussion over whether he or Aso Tarou should
assume the Prime Minister's seat, he took over from Abe in quite
undramatic fashion and proceeded to not accomplish much of anything
at all. He did come up with some stupid word choices and the
occasional superfluous sexist or xenophobic just, you know, kind of
thrown in there for flavour. A big contributing factor to his
eventual fall was his inability to cooperate with the Minshutou, as
exemplified by his statement that Japan would continue to provide
United States naval forces with fuel even though the Minshutou had
made it quite clear they would tolerate no such thing. Mostly,
though, he is noted for his ineffectiveness, so in hindsight it's not
surprising that he didn't last. Realising that the Jimintou and
Minshutou were hopelessly at loggerheads and it was all his fault, he
resigned out of nowhere following the failure of his medical reform
package.

Asou Tarou (2008-2009)

A high-ranking
Jimintou guy since the early Koizumi days, Asou was left heir
apparent with Fukuda gone, and he gladly leaped into action. Asou is
easy to hate, but I kind of like him. I find his completely unearned
cockiness just somehow endearing, his smirking sneer oddly
compelling. His unbelievably ignorant and inflammatory comments are
also amusing in their own way, insulting Jews, burakumin (butchers,
morticians, etc), Ainu, Zainichi, Korea, China, America, and Japan.
He's kind of a magnificent asshole. Shockingly, the voting public
were, it would seem, not so keen on him, as he called an election and
promptly got kicked to the moon, giving the Minshutou an
unprecedented majority. Having presided over the party's worst loss
in its history and (so it seemed at the time) possibly having
destroyed it outright, he immediately resigned as party leader.
Intriguingly, he is a professed manga fan, inspiring Otaku Nation to
take him as their own, with a billboard in his image once erected in
Akihabara.

Hatoyama Yukio (2009-2010)

Hailing from
Hokkaidou, Hatoyama pulled off a victory mostly by being less
repulsive than Asou, not an especially impressive feat. Counterpoint:
I realise that looks should be irrelevant in evaluating a politician,
but holy hell, this guy's face is goddamn terrifying. You're welcome.
Naturally, he does deserve some credit for taking down the ordinarily
invincible Jimintou, and he also pushed through an impressive number
of reforms, although he doesn't quite compare to Koizumi in terms of
either numbers or necessity. What ultimately took him down, a mere
six months in the job, was a couple of poor foreign policy decisions.
The American military's presence in Okinawa has been a contentious
issue for decades, and promising a round of base-kibosh was less than
savvy, especially when the DPRK sank an ROK submarine and indirectly
forced him to keep it open. Throw in the de rigeur financial scandals
that come with the territory and his party ultimately compelled him
to step aside. Interestingly, Hatoyama comes from a whole family of
politicians.

Kan Naoto (2010-2011)

Hatoyama's
deputy stepped in to replace him, and it turns out he had no shortage
of past transgressions against good taste, which is surprising
considering that I mainly remember him for how incredibly bland he
was. Not that I was really paying attention at the time, so maybe I'm
just totally off. Like his predecessor, he managed to piss a whole
bunch of people off by dicking around with stuff that ought not to be
dicked around with, in this case the consumption tax. For whatever
reason, the Japanese public is strongly, strongly against even the
possibility of a rising consumption tax, which has always seemed
strange to me given that Canada's is substantially higher, but then
again, we also have much stronger social services. His foreign policy
was outright incompetent; the current Senkaku dispute, which
political analyst Tougou Kazuhiko believes will develop into
something truly worrisome within the next year, first broke under his
watch, and also antagonized the nuclear-equipped DPRK after its
island bombardment. But perhaps his worst failure was the poor
handling of the 2011 Touhouku Earthquake relief, and after a little
touch-and-go he too stepped down, mostly voluntarily.

Noda Yoshihiko (2011-present)

Finally
we arrive at our current Prime Minister, a well-intentioned guy who
is at least more likeable than those of recent memory. He has pursued
an agenda of nuclear non-proliferation as best he can, this being one
of the Minshutou's main tenants, but the opposition's constant
dickish interference anytime he's tried to do almost anything at all
has seriously stymied any initiatives he might like to take. In kind
of an interesting case of rollover, he evoked ire in the same vein as
not
only Hatoyama but Kan as well, by trying to both double the
consumption tax and
incite an Asia-Pacific war. After realising that nobody wanted him
around anymore, but pretending not to, he called an election for
December 16th
and proceeded with an elaborate show of looking as though he believes
he might be re-elected.

*

The
way things stand, Abe seems poised to re-take the Prime Minister's
seat, but on an absolute scale he's not actually all that popular.
Personally, I hope that this means that he will last only one more
year before making way for yet another...someone who will last. It
would be fun if the man who kicked off the one-year term trend was
also the last one to continue it, 'cause that would not only bookend
things nicely but also maybe mean we could stop faffing about and get
some work done.

About Me

I've been studying Japanese language and culture since 2004 and have twice studied abroad to Kyouto. Veterans can enjoy my pratfalls, and newcomers should be able to gain some insight into life here. Maybe.